A simple design to usher in the new millennium

No doubt the begrudgers will be out in force, lambasting Dublin Corporation for its effrontery in backing the erection of an …

No doubt the begrudgers will be out in force, lambasting Dublin Corporation for its effrontery in backing the erection of an immensely tall spike in O'Connell Street.

And no doubt the city's legendary wits will have devised a derogatory nickname, probably by tonight. It is true the winning design is tall, gobsmackingly so.

The slender stainless steel "cone", designed by Mr Ian Ritchie, will be twice the height of Liberty Hall, Dublin's tallest building, and three times the height of the long-lost Nelson Pillar, destroyed in 1966.

"Whatever we choose, we'll be hung for it", one of the competition jurors said privately long before the winning design was finally selected.

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However, he now believes that "in one fell swoop", this stunning monument will re-establish the neglected area of Dublin north of the river.

Ms Joan O'Connor, who chaired the jury, said many people might wonder what the point was of holding a design competition to produce something so simple.

But then she quoted Plato as saying that beauty, style, harmony and grace all derived from simplicity.

Yet, as she also said, "simplicity is very hard to achieve".

The best ideas are almost always simple, and when the model was unveiled there was a Yosser-like sense yesterday that "I could do that."

The same was true of the pyramid form chosen by I.M. Pei for the Louvre in Paris.

It is bound to prove controversial. But then so were the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the pyramid at the Louvre and the Millennium Dome in London.

And we in Ireland have the added disadvantage that most of us seem unable to visualise what something will be like until it is built.

When it is, it will put O'Connell Street on the map because the beacon at its very pinnacle will be visible from all over the city.

This sensational structure will redefine the city centre and people's perceptions of where that is, quite apart from providing Dublin with a new icon.

It addresses not only its immediate context in O'Connell Street, but also more distant views and even the city as a whole. One of Mr Ritchie's "fundamental objectives" was to lift people's spirits, and it will certainly do that.

It is also avowedly contemporary, unlike many entries for the international competition which harkened back somewhat nostalgically to more familiar, even hackneyed, forms. The winning monument will be the linchpin for the renaissance of O'Connell Street, as envisaged in Dublin Corporation's £35 million integrated area plan published earlier this year, because it will inspire confidence in anyone planning to invest in the north inner city. Much will depend on the quality of the stainless steel work, but there is no reason to believe that it should not be seamless.

The only regret is that there will not be, cannot be, any public access. If there were, the very slenderness of the structure would be heavily compromised.

Costing £3 million, £1 million less than the budget provisionally allocated, it seems cheap at the price for a monument which will usher in the new millennium, confidently looking to the future and underlining the optimism of these prosperous times.